How To Make the Holidays Fun For All The Family
A Guest Post
With decorations hanging in the malls and Christmas commercials already on TV, the holidays are here again. While Thanksgiving and Christmas are the perfect times to get the family together, not all families have the luck of living in the same state, country, or even hemisphere, and it can be hard just to get everyone together, let alone make the holidays fun.
According to Power to Change, nothing defines a family more than how it celebrates together, as family traditions and rituals promote stability and create deep roots. They can also be a lot of fun! At the same time, though, the festive season can be a source of incredible strain and frustration, loneliness, or sadness. Are you having trouble making the holidays fun for everyone? Here are some things you can try:
Build Anticipation – There’s nothing like building up anticipation to get people excited about something. So whether it’s your lazy teenager who’s more interested in sleeping late than seeing Santa Claus, or your grown-up son who’s teaching English in Korea and won’t be able to come home this year, try to build up excitement for the event by counting down the days on a calendar. If your kids are at home, you could buy an advent calendar with chocolate surprises behind the windows, or color pictures every day.
Prepare together – visit a tree farm and pick out the Christmas tree of your choice, decorate the halls and hang up decorations together, adorn the tree and get the children to help as well. You can make up games while you’re doing it and take photos to show your loved ones far away.
Bake together – While you might not have a lot of time or desire to dedicate to the kitchen, Christmas baking with your children can be really fun. Ask Grandma for family recipes, get your kids to bring ideas home from school, or follow a TV cooking show. Getting the food ready in advance and allowing your kids to get creative is a great way to build excitement.
Make time for family fun – Don’t just sit around the TV when you’ve had your holiday meal. Go for a walk together, go out in the snow, play games, skype relatives who are far away or update your family blog. Whatever you do, make sure you do it together.
Create holiday rituals and traditions – Creating your own rituals and traditions, such as a Christmas Eve tradition, make the holiday as memorable as possible and more likely to be something that your whole family will look forward to. You could try reading The Night Before Christmas together, open one present each at midnight, or leave mince pies and carrots out for Santa and his reindeer. You could even just watch the same movie together each year. There are a whole host of Christmas classics for all the family to enjoy, such as It’s a Wonderful Life, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, White Christmas, and so on.
Whatever you decide to do, remember that there is no such thing as a perfect Christmas, so forget spending too much money and hoping that everything will be like it is in the movies. Remember that the most important thing is spending time together and celebrating loved ones near and far – not seeing who can buy the most expensive gifts.
Michael Peggs is the founder of digital marketing agency Marccx Media, where they specialize in SEO and Content Marketing. Before Marcxx, Peggs worked at Google in business development, forming digital media and advertising partnerships. He is also a blogger and podcaster, hosting the iTunes Top 10 New & Noteworthy podcast You University – The Personal Branding Podcast.
